How to Stay Positive During Tough Times

Life is filled with obstacles, challenges, and setbacks. Sometimes it can seem like the world is caving in on us. Our days are saturated with feelings of hopelessness, anxiety, and depression. In recent years, times have been particularly difficult for many people with the financial crisis and high unemployment rates. One only needs to look at the news and see crisis after crisis occurring in all corners of the globe.

However, one does not have to get stuck in a negative mindset and get mirrored in a state of panic and depression. With a proper perspective, you can be happy in the face of adversity. See the suggestions below for how to stay positive during tough times.

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Staying Positive

Break out of the victim mentality: Take responsibility for 100% of what happens in your life, including your emotional state. When you put the blame for your unhappiness on other people and outside circumstances, you will only prolong your suffering and avoid the root of your problem. When you take responsibility for the things in your life, you are in complete control. This means a greater ability to actually do something to solve your problems.

Have a giving heart: Giving to others, whether it be family, friends, or doing charity work, is a wonderful way to boost morale. It also is an excellent way to open up opportunities in your life. Thinking only of yourself is hard work. The ego is a complicated entity. Much energy is wasted in trying to satisfy it. However, thinking mostly of others makes life simple and easy. Just give, give, give and you will be happy.

Meditate: There are many benefits to performing meditation. It calms the mind, helps you establish a sense of balance in your life, enables you to see your life from an wider perspective, and it gives you numerous physical benefits, such as lowering the blood pressure. There are many different meditation techniques such as following your “in’ and “out” breaths, reciting a mantra, and vipassana, or meditation in which you observe such things as your body, feelings, and thoughts.

Do some kind of physical exercise: Exercise releases “endorphins,” or feel good neurotransmitters in the body. Simply exercising makes you feel happy and gives you a natural “high.” Go for a run, do some yoga, lift some weights, or take a walk outside. Research has even shown the simple act of getting up and walking to another room has a positive effect on your state of mind. Avoid sitting for too long and get moving.

Be grateful: A helpful exercise to do everyday is to make a list of all of the things that you are thankful in your life. It can be general things like having food to eat, a roof over your head, air to breath, kind people in your life, or more specific events in your life such as something kinAd someone said to you or an accomplishment of a task. It is also important to be thankful for things that at first glance may seem like negative things. Review some things from the past that seemed really bad at the time, but as result of the event, turned into a positive by opening new doors for you or leading you on a positive path.

Get enough sleep: It can be easy during stressful times to skip on sleep. Try to get at least 7-9 hours a sleep a night for a healthy mind and body.

There are many professions for helping others to live positively, such as a counselor, doctor, or teacher. For more information for helping you pursue such careers, see Online Courses.